Now that NASA has found evidence of water on Mars, astronauts will test the growth of a small plant in Martian soil, thanks to students at Bellevue’s Open Window School.
The experiment will be one of 21 trials put to the test 250 miles above sea level on the International Space Station through the Student Space Flight Experiments Program (SSEP). The Open Window School was chosen to participate in the program last fall, and is the only school in the state to be included.
“Participation in SSEP offers our students an experience that they will remember the rest of their lives. Far more than learning science, they will have the opportunity to be scientists, conducting an experiment structured identically to the work of the world’s leading researchers,” said Open Window’s Head of School, Jeff Stroebel.
Fifty student teams of fourth through eighth graders worked on proposals for microgravity experiments. They include topics such as seed germination, crystal growth, physiology and life cycles of microorganisms, cell biology and growth, food studies, and studies of micro-aquatic life, but had to be designed to work within the constraints of a Fluids Mixing Enclosure (FME) research mini-laboratory and pass a NASA Flight Safety Review.
Through a two-step review process, the pool of proposals was first narrowed down to three finalists by a review board consisting of researchers and master STEM educators., from which the winning experiment was selected by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education.
The winning proposal, “Arabidopsis Germination in Martian Soil Simulant,” tests the effects of microgravity on the growth of Arabidopsis (a small flowering plant) in simulated Martian soil. The experiment was proposed by seventh grade team members — Subi Lumala, Vivienne Rutherford and Catherine Whitmer — who are “over the moon” that their experiment was selected.
“We developed this proposal so that colonists would have starter seedlings for both fresh foodand for science experiments. Arabidopsis is very hardy and there is a lot of knowledge about the plant in the scientific community,” said Rutherford and Whitmer.
Other proposed projects included figuring out whether potatoes would be more resistant to the plant pathogen bacteria Pectobacterium carotovorum in microgravity and whether hydroponic plant germination could occur in microgravity.
In addition to the Arabidopsis experiment, Open Window School will send two official mission patches designed by kindergarten through eighth grade students to fly aboard the ISS.
The mission is planned for late spring or early summer of this year.
